Friendship Drama

The Christmas festivities are complete.  I have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, I'm glad that it's all wrapped up and life can return to normal, especially eating life since I have continued to put on weight.  On the other hand, there's always so much anticipation and then it seems to be over so quickly that it's a little sad.  Both my daughter and I have been fighting the blues a little bit today.  My husband went downtown to spend his Christmas money at the record shops (yes, buying actual vinyl records).  My son begged me to take him to Target to spend a gift card he got since he'd already built all of his new Lego sets and the gift card was burning a hole in his pocket.  He's saving the rest of his money for a trip to the Lego store with one of his friends.  I'm always a bit amazed that my son and this boy are still friends.  This boy and my son met when the boy was in 2nd grade and my son was in Kindergarten.  They became fast friends because they had so much in common, and they're still friends even now when my son is in 5th grade and still in elementary school and this boy is in 7th grade and at middle school.  But I'm glad they're still friends because this boy is so kind and smart, and he's a very good influence on my son.

Some of my son's other friends I'm not so happy about.  I know that it makes no sense to be angry with 9- and 10-year old boys, but when the maternal instinct kicks in, rational thought tends to exit.  There are two boys who are a year younger than my son, so who are currently in 4th grade, who live a couple of blocks away from us.  My son can walk right to their houses on the creek that runs behind our house.  They live across the green belt from each other, so not on the same street, but very close.  One of the boys I've never been overly fond of; he's like the antithesis of the older boy who brings out the best in my son.  This 4th grade boy and my son tend to bring out the worst in each other, and they've always been on-again, off-again friends.  They've been on the outs for some time now, which doesn't bother me (or frankly, my son) all that much.  But the problem is that he's a bit of a bully.  He tells the other boy who lives near him who he should be friends with, and gets angry if he doesn't listen.

For several weeks now, my son and the other 4th grade boy, who's also very nice, haven't been able to be friends because the nice boy is afraid of the other boy who lives near him.  But then the other day, while we're out on winter break, this nice boy came over to play with my son again.  They played for hours and my son told him that he'd continue to stay away from him at school so he didn't have any problems.  The boy left his gloves at our house, so the next morning, Christmas Eve, we walked over to return his gloves.  He asked if he could come and play again, so again the boys spent hours together playing Legos, running around in the yard, and playing the Wii.  It was starting to get dark when it was time for this boy to head home, so I told him we'd walk him home.  I don't think his parents worry about it too much, and I'm alright with the boys playing on the creek alone during daylight, but not after dark.  Just as we turned off the creek to go to his house, we saw the other boy playing on the greenbelt.  The boy who had just spent two days playing with my son screamed out, "my parents made me!"

It hurt my heart that my son had to hear that, and that this other little boy was so scared that he felt he had to lie and hurt my son to protect himself.  My son hasn't been an angel in this situation, and I know that he's brought some of the ire on himself.  These are children, who of course want to protect themselves and don't stop to think about how they're impacting others.  But I have to admit that I wanted to go over and have strong words with the boy who's being mean to my son and scaring his neighbor so badly that he can't admit he still wants to be friends with my son.  I don't want the unkind boy and my son to be friends again, because they cause too much trouble together.  I just don't want him to destroy my son's friendships with people with whom he plays well.  But I can't yell at him for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is because I don't want to scare a child, even if a small, mean part of me feels he deserves it.

I just keep reminding myself that next year my son will be going to middle school and these boys will still be at elementary school.  He'll make new friends there, and hopefully find himself as a student a bit more.  At my son's request, we got him entered into the lottery to attend the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) middle school, so maybe he'll go there and never have to see this particular child again.  Even if his name isn't drawn in that lottery, he'll have a year at middle school before he'll be at the same school as this boy again.  A year in which he'll hopefully mature even more and move on from this.  It's really hard not to be able to fix this for my son.  But maybe he's learning some valuable life and relationship lessons in this mess.

On another topic, it's quite beautiful here right now with our Christmas snow.  The day after Christmas (Boxing Day) we didn't get much sun and it continued to snow lightly off and on all day.  That was also the day we had our final Christmas celebration.  My in-laws (who I adore) came over, along with my father-in-law's parents.  They are a bit harder to take, and I fully admit that I had to have a couple of glasses of wine to get through that event!  At least the view out the window was lovely.

The waxing moon behind the snow-covered trees

I love the way these LED rope lights color and light the snow 

 The sun came out today and the snow sparkled under the blue sky .